Recent Posts

Is the weather preventing you from getting outside and doing the things you enjoy? Take advantage of your indoor time and get ORGANIZED! I know it seems overwhelming and you are feeling a little lazy these days. But, think about all the time you waste looking for things and the money you waste when you end up buying what you can’t find! Being organized can help you find and utilize your things quicker saving you precious time and money. Imagine how much more time you will have to do all those things you enjoy if only you could FIND that picnic basket, fishing/camping equipment, golf clubs, surfboard and those water skis. Where did you put them? Organize once and maintain it with a durable long lasting system/products and you will never have to feel that frustration again. To get organized you will not only need the incentive to organize your chaotically stored items, you will also need some organization tools to facilitate that effort.

Of course, there are a lot of great organizers out there, so you need to do your research and find the one that works best for you. In my search for good organization system for our own cluttered garage area, the FLOW WALL product line caught my eye and even seemed familiar to me. You see, my husband loves to watch car restoration shows; and I remembered noticing how organized the garage storage areas and work space is. Now, I realized the Flow Wall product line is being used on several of these TV shows where organization is the key to efficiency …and prosperity. I noted that the host of some of these shows is endorsing the Flow Wall product line for use in garages. Although, this article is primarily focused on organizing garage spaces, you can customize this system and products for many other cluttered areas.

Per it’s advertisement, Flow Wall is the most effective way to organize your garage, laundry room, or tool shed. With the innovative plans and designs, you can create a custom storage space that will help you eliminate clutter, organize your belongings, and easily find what you need. You can purchase cabinets, shelves, and bins separately or get the whole package with lifestyle and starter sets.

Our garage is definitely a ‘sore subject’ in our house. Ever since our move in 2016, we have been throwing away things we thought we would never use again and ‘storing’ massive amount of ‘stuff’ that do not know what to do with yet. That ‘storage’ method has gotten out of hand. When we realized that we could no longer park our cars in the garage and were spending way too much time trying to find things, we decided it was time to take some serious action to put an end to that frustration. Oh, there are other cluttered storage areas that are equally frustrating; but, we are starting with the garage intending to create a ‘grab and go’ garage storage system for a fun summer and to make our winters easier.

Here is a Garage Make Over video depicting how a this type of transformation can be done. By the way, this was a Flow Wall give away!

TIP: If you are not sure where/how to get started, Flow Wall offers a planning guide that will walk you through the process of identifying your storage needs, measuring your space, and finding the right storage equipment for your needs. They are ready to help you make the most of your space.

WINTER is another season filled with it’s own unique magic and a perfect ending/beginning to the year. I will be working to help you bring this magic into your home in ways that will help you make the best of this beautiful time of the year. To get you in the mood, I hope you enjoy this timeless rendition of WINTER WONDERLAND by Johnny Mathis and the incredible winter photography.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday season and are ready make your NEW year one of the best yet! I took a little break in December; but, I am back now and will be providing you with new tips to improve your home and garden. Please stay tuned to this website as I continue to build its content and them with links to amazing discounts that will facilitate all your home and garden projects in 2018 -and help you stay within your budget. Go to the SHOP NOW tab and click on the*NEW Special Offers link to stay up to date on the most current sales -or click on any of my advertisers for direct access to any of your store-specific shopping needs.

The trees are turning; the weather’s getting cooler; Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back—it’s finally FALL! No! -exclaims that one friend who cares deeply about proper English (language), it’s AUTUMN!!

I love all four seasons for each has its own unique beauty and style. I am so thankful to live in an area that allows me to fully embrace each season’s soul gifts. As I think about these seasonal gifts, I began to wonder why some call this time of the year FALL and others refer to it as AUTUMN. Have you ever wondered about this?

How did the two completely unalike words come to refer to the same season? As it turns out, both ‘autumn’ and ‘fall’ originated in Britain. So why is ‘fall’ primarily used in America?

The older of the two words is autumn, which first came into English in the 1300s from the Latin word autumnus. (Etymologists aren’t sure where the Latin word came from.) It had extensive use right from its first appearance in English writing, and with good reason: the common name for this intermediary season prior to the arrival of autumn was harvest, which was potentially confusing, since harvest can refer to both the time when harvesting crops usually happens (autumn) as well as the actual harvesting of crops (harvest). The word autumn was, then, a big hit.

Names for the season didn’t just end with autumn, however. Poets continued to be wowed by the changes autumn brought, and in time, the phrase “the fall of the leaves” came to be associated with the season. This was shortened in the 1600s to fall.

Around this time, England’s empire was fast expanding, which meant that the English language was going places. One place it went was to the New World, and it set up shop in North America in the 1600s. As time went on, the English spoken in America and the English spoken in Britain diverged: there wasn’t as much contact between the two groups of English speakers. Throw into the mix the independence of the United States, and the fact that the type of English spoken in America became part of our early national identity, and the gulf between the two dialects of English widened.

A handful of words got caught in the identity crisis, and fall was one of them. Both autumn and fall were born in Britain, and both emigrated to America. But autumn was, by far, the more popular term for quite a long time. In fact, the “autumn” sense of fall wasn’t even entered into a dictionary until 1755, when Samuel Johnson first entered it in his Dictionary of the English Language.

By the middle of the 1800s, American English and British English had diverged, and so had fall and autumn. One early American lexicographer, John Pickering, noted in his entry for fall:

A friend has pointed out to me the following remark on this word: “In North America the season in which this [the fall of the leaf] takes place, derives its name from that circumstance, and instead of autumn is universally called the fall.”—John Pickering, A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the United States of America, 1816

We aren’t sure why Fall flourished in the United States—Pickering’s friend gives us no further particulars—but by the mid-1800s, fall was considered to be entirely American by American lexicographers. Fall is still occasionally used in countries where British English is spoken, but usually only in a handful of fixed phrases, like spring and fall.

When you are selecting the types of trees, scrubs, or flowers to be used for your landscape, you will need to know your Plant Hardiness Zone to ensure that you achieve the long lasting beauty that works well in your particular location.

Plant Hardiness Zones specified by the USDA are based on the average annual extreme minimum temperature during a 30-year period in the past, not the lowest temperature that has ever occurred in the past or might occur in the future. Gardeners should keep that in mind when selecting plants, especially if they choose to “push” their hardiness zone by growing plants not rated for their zone. In addition, although this 2012 edition of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is drawn in the most detailed scale to date, there might still be micro-climates that are too small to show up on the map.

Micro-climates are fine-scale climate variations which can be small heat islands—such as those caused by blacktop and concrete—or cool spots caused by small hills and valleys. Individual gardens also may have very localized micro-climates. Your entire yard could be somewhat warmer or cooler than the surrounding area because it is sheltered or exposed. You also could have pockets within your garden that are warmer or cooler than the general zone for your area or for the rest of your yard, such as a sheltered area in front of a south-facing wall or a low spot where cold air pools first. No hardiness zone map can take the place of the detailed knowledge that gardeners pick up about their own gardens through hands-on experience.

In addition, many species of plants gradually acquire cold hardiness in the fall when they experience shorter days and cooler temperatures. This hardiness is normally lost gradually in late winter as temperatures warm and days become longer. A bout of extremely cold weather early in the fall may injure plants even though the temperatures may not reach the average lowest temperature for your zone. Similarly, exceptionally warm weather in midwinter followed by a sharp change to seasonably cold weather may cause injury to plants as well. Such factors are not taken into account in the USDA PHZM.

Other Factors

Here in our Idaho location, the Plant Hardiness Zone is 6a. However, I have discovered that very few plants specify a unique hardiness zone such as 6a. Instead they list a range such as 5-8.

Therefore, in addition to hardiness zones, you will also need to consider other environmental factors that contribute to success or failure of plants. Wind, soil type, soil moisture, humidity, pollution, snow, and winter sunshine can greatly affect the survival of plants. The way plants are placed in the landscape, how they are planted, and their size and health might also influence their survival.

Light:To thrive, plants need to be planted where they will receive the proper amount of light. For example, plants that require partial shade that are at the limits of hardiness in your area might be injured by too much sun during the winter because it might cause rapid changes in the plant’s temperature.

Soil Moisture: Plants have different requirements for soil moisture, and this might vary seasonally. Plants that might otherwise be hardy in your zone might be injured if soil moisture is too low in late autumn and they enter dormancy while suffering moisture stress.

Temperature: Plants grow best within a range of optimum temperatures, both cold and hot. That range may be wide for some varieties and species but narrow for others.

Duration of exposure to cold: Many plants that can survive a short period of exposure to cold may not tolerate longer periods of cold weather.

Humidity: High relative humidity limits cold damage by reducing moisture loss from leaves, branches, and buds. Cold injury can be more severe if the humidity is low, especially for evergreens.

SOURCES:

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) -links are provided within content above